Forging Zero
by SheegothBait
Summary: He has freed himself from the grasp of a monster, only to be swept up in a galaxy he does not understand. He will go anywhere and do anything for explanations and answers, but everything comes at a price, and sooner or later he will have to pay it... Background info in FZ:Lost Years.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, my beautiful readers.

For those of you who have reviewed, been following or have read Forging Zero, first of all I want to thank you for your interest. I want to tell Goliat's story, and I'm glad that you show interest in reading it.

But onto business.

I'm not sure what the majority of you folks expected when you first dug into Forging Zero, but 77 percent of my current script is focused on Goliat's very early years. My plan was to write the script from beginning to end, but Goliat's (horrific) childhood is taking up an inordinate amount of time. I realize that this almost complete focus on this specific period of time risks alienating a majority of people who just came for a gritty, turian-centric story focused around a turian who does have the capability to think and fend for himself as opposed to watching a young child grow under "questionable" conditions.

I have also come to the conclusion that spending so much time in such unpleasant circumstances (based on how much I have written and my current rate of chapter publication) has the potential to make me seem like a psychopath (or the story to seem like a torture porn).

I do not want you, my dear readers, to think either of these things, because though it may not seem like it, this story is going places. Therefore, in the interest of getting to a more mutually agreeable place, I'm splitting the first part off from the rest of the story.

For those of you who did come for Dr. Levia, don't panic. I will still be publishing updates to this particular piece of Forging Zero, so have at it! Knowing what goes on in Goliat's early years may give you an extra depth of understanding as far as fathoming this character's mental state and specific actions.

For those of you reading Forging Zero for the first time, welcome! Try not to worry too much about missing anything, because I will do my very best to explain Goliat's circumstances, personality, and actions the best I possibly can. If you have any questions at all, PM me and I will be happy to answer any query you might pose to the best of my ability. I'll also include outtakes from the aforementioned first section to try to fill you in as to what happened so that you're not horribly confused. And if it so strikes your fancy, the first sequence will always be available for your casual perusal.

Please note that the warnings in FZ:Lost Years apply here as well. (i.e. physical/psychological abuse, drug abuse, violence, foul language, character death, torture)

If you have any complaints or questions, you are welcome to contact me.

I hope to see you all in later chapters.

Stay beautiful,

SheegothBait


	2. Dependence

Blood pooled at his feet, dripping from the broken, mostly-dead turian tied to the chair in front of him. The man's head hung limply, his eyes closed. He surveyed the damage he'd done, but felt only righteous fury, even as cobalt life dripped from Levia's body, threading its way from ruptured veins and torn muscle, wasting itself on the floor. He _should_ finish the job by taking his tormentor apart piece by piece to repay the man the favor of his many years of suffering, but he didn't want to spend any more time here. He had the information he was looking for.

The scalpel slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

With empty, blue-stained fingers, he grasped Levia's crest, yanking the turian's head back in a quick, vicious jerk. A groan escaped the doctor and his eyelids fluttered.

"Wake up, _eska_ ," he spat, pressing the muzzle of Levia's gun against its owner's head. The man gazed at him with half-lidded gray eyes that betrayed neither fear nor remorse.

"You're no better than me if you kill me, Sixty," he said, his pain-ragged voice soft and calm. "Just look at what you've done to me al-"

The report of the weapon cut him off, painting the wall with the turian's brains and waking Goliat with a jerk.

Rain pelted against the tempered glass dome of the shuttle, tongues of lightning flickering across the sky outside. He uncurled, winced, and did his best to stretch within the confines of the vehicle. One glance at the nav console and the city lights flickering below told him he was close to his destination anyway; the freighter yard couldn't be far. He'd thought about trying to book passage off-world on a standard passenger ship, but as soon as the security took one look at the blood-covered state of him, they'd drag him aside for questioning. They wouldn't understand that Levia _had_ to die, that the bastard lied, tricked, and manipulated his way through his existence and that there was nothing moral left in the turian to save because the man had no morals in the first place. But, madman or not, shooting someone was still a life-sentence offense, based on how carefully Levia had kept the deaths of his subjects and staff hidden.

So travel jammed into the hold of a cargo ship it was.

His stomach growled, and he reached for his pack, peeling the blood-drenched lab coat from the top and flinging it aside in distaste. He'd only taken the thing for warmth; surely it would be colder than the temperature-controlled labs elsewhere, especially if he was moving off-planet. He may be ignorant of the outside world, but he wasn't stupid, and he'd packed to ensure he had at least some of what he needed; a couple water bottles and some pre-packaged food sat wedged in just below the coat. He chose a package at random, opened it, and began to eat with his fingers, carefully moving the rest of the provisions aside to reveal his far more valuable cargo; several syringes packaged in sterile plastic and four tightly-wrapped, well-cushioned boxes holding precious vials of the drug he so desperately needed. He did some quick mental math. If he used half a vial a day, that would give him a little over…ninety-six days to find more.

He muttered a soft curse. He hated dosing himself, hated the lapse in conscious action that the drug frequently produced, hated his dependency on it and the crippling pain that followed if he failed to take his injections, and above all, hated the constant fear of not knowing how long he could hold the withdrawal symptoms back. He had no idea where he would end up or if the planet he wound up on could cater to his needs. He doubted his supply would hold out for ninety-six days; he'd been through the whole tolerance-detox cycle many times; he'd inevitably want more than his current estimation of half a vial a day. He'd probably wind up thieving this stuff after his supply ran out.

It was all Levia's fucking fault.

The pain, the scars, his addiction…every source of misery in his life stemmed from a scientist with mad delusions of power and grandeur. It didn't matter that the man was dead. Levia had known this would happen to him, had told him as much during one of his throes of misery, had purposely created the dependence so that Goliat needed him. A flicker of desperation-fueled regret flashed through him. _Maybe killing him was a bad idea…_ The only way to get an endless supply was through Levia.

He gave his head a shake. He just wasn't thinking clearly. Levia wouldn't have filled that need anyway. Based on the way the doctor _almost_ weaned him off the opioids only to plunge him right back into addiction's grasp and the twisted way he'd mentally fucked with Goliat, he was willing to bet the bastard would have poisoned him the first chance he got, and his own lack of pharmacological knowledge would have made it that much easier. Not that it hadn't felt like he'd been poisoned during withdrawal…

He grimaced as he recalled those hazes of alternating bliss and agony. At first, Levia had freely given the medication when he asked for it or expressed pain. After he'd started actively defying the man, though, Levia had started withholding the drug until withdrawal set in, forcing him to beg for relief, sometimes curled at the scientist's feet for maximum humiliation. _All so Levia could prove he was able to control me,_ he thought bitterly, crushing the empty food wrapper in one hand.

No more.

Sometime, somehow, he was going to shake this habit. But right now, he couldn't be hampered by the pain of withdrawal.

The nav system beeped at him, and he shut the alert off. He knew he was close; the thinning of the lights below and the increased engine noise from the nearby freight shuttles told him as much. A bolt of lightning illuminated the parking space for personal shuttles, and he eased the stolen one down next to the much older-looking models and repacked his bag. He shivered as he stepped into the torrential rain, instantly getting drenched to the skin. The stained coat might be waterproof, but it was also too conspicuous. He'd have to tolerate the cold for now.

Puddles splashed underfoot as he made his way across the slick black-top, heading for the broad, lighted hangar door beyond the tall chain-link fence. No one was watching; he didn't see any security measures at all other than the coil of razor wire at the top, and everyone else around here was too busy trying to avoid getting soaked. He shifted his bag to his front to protect his gut, then began to climb the fence. The metal chain-link was treacherous, slick with rain-water. He reached the razor wire and carefully swung his right leg over. This, he knew, was a dangerous place to be; one slip, one second of carelessness, and he'd slice himself to ribbons.

He swung his other leg over, the metal biting into his fingers as he kept a death grip on the fence, groping for purchase with his left foot. Heat crawled up his neck as he concentrated on keeping the rest of him as far away from the razor wire as possible. His bag caught on the deadly coils, and he swore as the cloth tore like wet paper. He let go with one hand, and a crack of thunder made him jump. He lost his grip and fell, white heat flashing along his arm where the razors caught his skin. He fell to the water-softened ground with a wet splat, the impact driving the breath from his body. Something crunched, though he barely noticed. He gasped in the mud for a moment, struggling for air and seeing stars, then got slowly to his feet. Swearing and clutching at his bleeding arm, he hastened towards the freight shuttles, keeping to the shadows.

VVVVVVVVVVVV

 **Credit where credit is due: I might be using some words from various Turian dictionaries**. **All credit for associated language goes to the author of said dictionaries, and I will attempt to credit directly wherever/whenever I can.**

 **Eska- An extremely derogatory term meaning trash or filth. (MizDirected?)**


End file.
